The Gangster

  “A DA dick told me you dropped my name on him,” he greeted Bell.

  “Only your name. I was trying to get a handle on Adlerman Martin.”

  “I reckoned as much,” said Coligney. He jerked a thumb at the billboard. “Thought you’d like to see Part Two of this exhibit.”

  Alderman James Martin was behind the billboard, barely out of the regular visitors’ sight. He was hanging by the neck. His face was blue, his tongue as thick and gray as a parrot’s, his body stiff.

  Coligney said, “He wasn’t here when they closed last night. They found him this morning.”

  “What time do they close?”

  “Closed at eleven. Opened this morning at nine.”

  “Are we supposed to believe he committed suicide from guilt?”

  “Martin didn’t have a guilty bone in his body. But, at any rate, he’s been dead a lot longer than twelve hours. Which means he didn’t hang himself here.”

  “Not likely he hanged himself elsewhere, either,” Bell noted. He inspected the body closely. “But it doesn’t look like he put up a struggle.”

  Coligney agreed. “On the other hand, his pockets were empty, except for one thing.” He held up a business card, balancing the edges between his big fingers. Bell read it.

  “Who is Davidson?”

  “Onetime reformer. Saw where the money was made and woke up thoroughly Tammanized. Big wheel in the Contractors’ Protective Association.”

  “What’s his card doing in Martin’s pocket?”

  “I’d guess same reason Alderman Martin is hanging here: To make Tammany look even worse than the Chamber of Horrors.”

  “So Davidson locked horns with whoever hanged Martin.”

  Coligney nodded. “And they’ve just sent him a threat.”

  Bell asked, “How much time would I have to interview Davidson before you make it official?”

  Coligney found sudden interest in the ceiling. “My cops are busy. I’d imagine you have a day.”

  “I’ll need two,” said Bell. Time for Research to scrutinize Davidson before he braced him.

  The side-wheel river steamer Rose C. Stambaugh struggled to land at Storm King sixty miles up the Hudson from New York. Smoke fountained from the stack behind her wheelhouse, and her vertical beam engine, which stood like an oil derrick between her paddle wheels, belched steam that turned white in the cold air.

  The pilot cussed a blue streak, under his breath, when a bitter gust—straight from the North Pole—stiffened the American flag flying from the stern and threatened to hammer his boat against the wharf. Winter could not shut down the river too soon for him.

  Isaac Bell stood at the head of the gangway, poised to disembark. He wore a blue greatcoat and a derby and carried an overnight satchel. Red and green Branco’s Grocery wagons were lined up on the freight deck, stacked full of barrels and crates destined for the aqueduct crews at the heart of the great enterprise. The siphon that would shunt the Catskills water under the Hudson River would connect the Ashokan Dam with New York City.

  The mules were already in their traces. The instant the gangway hit the wharf, Bell strode down it and pulled ahead of the long-eared animals clumping after him. Officials scattered when they saw him coming.

  If his coat and hat made him look like a New York City police detective, or a high-ranking Water Supply Board cop, Isaac Bell was not about to say he wasn’t. Two birds with one stone on this trip included a second visit with J. B. Culp. This time, it would be on his home turf, Raven’s Eyrie, which Bell could see gleaming halfway up the mountain in the noonday sun. In his bag were evening clothes. First he would look like a police detective under the mountain.

  He found the site where they were sinking a new access shaft to the siphon tunnel. The original shaft had been started too close to the mountain edge, where the granite proved too weak to withstand the aqueduct’s water pressure.

  “Can I help you, sir?” the gate man asked warily.

  “Where’s Davidson?”

  “I’ll send somebody for him.”

  “Just point me the way.”

  The gate man pointed up the hill.

  Bell stepped close, cop close. “Precisely where?”

  “There’s a contractor’s shed about a hundred feet from the new shaft.”

  Bell moved closer, his shoulder half an inch from the man’s cheek. “If you use that telephone to warn him, I will come back for you when I’m done with him.”

  Davidson’s official job was to provide expert advice on the labor situation. That was window dressing. His real job was collecting contract fees from the Contractors’ Protective Society—or, as former newspaperman Detective Scudder Smith put it, “Tammany’s on-site fleecer of contractors and taxpayers.” Originally a Municipal Ownership League proponent of public utilities, Davidson had switched sides after the city’s Ramapo Water Grab victory and become, as Captain Coligney had noted, thoroughly Tammanized.

  Across the Hudson—where the Catskills water tunneled under and emerged from the uptake—a stretch of aqueduct was being bored by a company that had paid Davidson an “honorarium” of five percent of the contract fee for his expert advice. Or so reliable rumor unearthed by Van Dorn operators had it. Vaguer rumors had Davidson shaking down Antonio Branco for $20,000 for a provisioning contract. Trouble was, hearsay was not evidence, and graft charges would never make it to court before the statute of limitations expired.

  But despite his apparent immunity, Davidson was scared. Rattled, it seemed to Bell, at least too rattled to question Bell’s masquerade as a cop. “I got the telegraph” were the first words out of the heeler’s mouth.

  “What telegraph?” asked Bell.

  “The message. They left him hanging there for me. Warning me off.”

  “From what?”

  “None of your business.”

  Bell said, “If you want me to run you in, the boat’s heading back to New York. Or we can take the train if you prefer trains.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “What?”

  “Arrest me. I’ll be safer in your custody than I am standing here.”

  “Fine with me,” Bell bluffed, “if you think you’ll be safer in a city jail.”

  Davidson wet his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go see Finn. He’ll set you straight.”

  “Which Finn?”

  Davidson looked at him sharply. “There is only one Finn, and if you don’t know him, you’re not who you say you are.”

  Bell tried to bull through it. “I’m asking politely one more time. Which Finn?”

  Davidson turned on his heel and walked again, leaving the tall detective with a strong feeling he had egg on his face. He hurried into the village, found a telephone building next to the post office, and phoned Captain Coligney. It took a while to connect to the long-distance wire, and he assumed that the local operator was listening in.

  “Do you know a ‘Finn’ in connection with our hanging?”

  “I’m afraid you’re talking about Brandon Finn. Not beholden to the powers in the usual way. Informal, if you know what I mean.”

  “You mean he operates off the usual tracks?”

  “And covers his tracks.”

  “Who does Brandon Finn report to?”

  “The Boss. But only on a strictly informal basis. Why do you ask?”

  “It might be smart to keep an eye on him.”

  “Too late,” said Coligney. “He died.”

  “Of what?”

  “They don’t know yet.”

  Bell composed a telegram in Van Dorn cipher.

  PROTECT CLAYPOOL HOME AND OFFICE

  If Brandon Finn was linked directly to Boss Fryer, then whoever was killing the Tammany men was nearing the top of the heap. If Claypool was the fixer who started the ball rolling, th
en he could be next.

  Archie Abbott took for granted that he delighted women the way catnip fired up cats. So when an attractive brunette taking tea in the Knickerbocker Hotel lobby not only failed to notice him but looked straight through him as if he didn’t exist, Abbott took it as a radical challenge to the proper order of things.

  “Good afternoon.”

  She had arresting blue eyes. They roved over Abbott’s square chin, his aquiline nose, his piercing eyes, his high brow, his rich red hair, and his dazzling smile. She said, “I’m afraid we’ve not been introduced, sir,” and returned her gaze to her magazine.

  “Allow me to remedy that,” said Abbott. “I am Archibald Angell Abbott IV. It would be an honor to make your acquaintance.”

  She did not invite him to sit beside her. At this point, were he not known to the Knickerbocker’s house detectives as a fellow Van Dorn, two well-dressed burly men would have quietly materialized at his elbows and escorted him to the sidewalk while explaining that mashers were not permitted to molest ladies in their hotel—and don’t come back!

  “My friends call me Archie.”

  “What does your wife call you?”

  “I hope she will call me whatever pleases her when we finally meet. May I ask your name?”

  “Francesca.”

  “What a beautiful name.”

  “Thank you, Archibald.”

  “Just Archie is fine.”

  “It pleases me to call you Archibald.”

  Abbott’s sharp eye had already fixed on her left hand, where a wedding ring made a slight bulge in her glove. “Are you married, Francesca?”

  “I am a widow.”

  “I am terribly sorry,” he lied.

  “Thank you. It has been two years.”

  “I notice you still wear the ring.”

  “The ring keeps the wrong type from getting the wrong idea.”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Why?”

  Abbott grinned. “To see whether I’m the wrong type.”

  Francesca smiled a smile that lit her eyes like limelight. “Only the wrong type would get the wrong idea.”

  “Tell me about your accent, I don’t quite recognize it. I studied accents as an actor. Before my current line of work.”

  “What is your line?”

  “Insurance.”

  “Sit down, Archibald,” said Francesca Kennedy. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  23

  The gatehouse at Raven’s Eyrie looked like it had been built to repel anarchists and labor agitators. Sturdy as an armory, the two-story granite redoubt was flanked by high walls. The gate had bars thick as railroad track, and the driveway it blocked was so steep that no vehicle could get up enough speed to batter through it. But what riveted Isaac Bell’s attention were the shooting slits in the upper story, which would allow riflemen to pick off attackers at their leisure. J. B. Culp was not taking chances with anyone who had it in for the rich.

  “Please inform Mr. Culp that Isaac Bell has come to accept the invitation he offered at Seawanhaka to view his ice yacht.”

  “Have you an appointment, sir?”

  The gatekeeper wore an immaculate uniform. He had cropped iron-gray hair and a rugged frame. His sidearm was the old Model 1873 .45 Colt the United States Marines had brought back into service for its stopping power in the Philippine Campaign.

  Bell passed his card through the bars. “Mr. Culp invited me to drop by anytime.”

  Five minutes later, Culp himself tore down the driveway in a six-cylinder, air-cooled Franklin—the same six-cylinder model that had just made a coast to coast run across the continent in a record-breaking fifteen days. “Welcome, Bell! How do you happen to be up here?”

  “We’re underwriting some of the aqueduct contractors’ insurers. Hartford asked me to have a look at our interests.”

  “Lucky you found me at home.”

  “I suspected that phones and wires cut you loose from the city,” answered Bell, who had had an operative keeping tabs on Culp’s comings and goings since eliminating the other Cherry Grove suspects.

  “Hop in! I’ll show you around.”

  “I came especially to see your iceboat.”

  Culp swung the auto onto a branch of the driveway that descended along the inside of the estate walls all the way down to the river, where crew barracks adjoined a boathouse. Yard workers were hauling sailboats up a marine railway. Inside the boathouse, his ice racer was suspended over the water, ready to be lowered when it froze. It had the broad stance of a waterspider, a lightweight contraption consisting of a strong triangular “hull”—two crossed spars of aluminum—with skate blades at the three corners.

  “Entirely new, modern design,” Culp boasted. “Got the idea for aluminum from my Franklin. Strong and light.” It struck Bell that Culp sounded like a typical sportsman obsessed with making his yacht, or racehorse, or auto, or ice yacht a winner.

  Bell marveled at the rig hanging from the rafters. “Monster sail.”

  “Lateen rig. Beats the tried and true Hudson River gaff main and clubfooted jib. I cracked ninety knots last winter.”

  “Ninety? You’ll beat the 20th Century.”

  “I’ll beat a hundred, this winter. Come on, I’ll show you the house.”

  The house at Raven’s Eyrie was a very large mansion with striking views through sheets of glass so big they could have been department store show windows in New York. Here, too, Culp struck him as more the proud homeowner than a killer. For the interior, Culp had gone shopping in Europe. Bell exclaimed politely at regular intervals, and stopped dead in his tracks to study an enormous silver, lapis lazuli, and ivory sculpture on the dining room table. Dominating the table, where it would tower over thirty guests, it depicted Saint George, on horseback, running his lance through a dragon. Bell had just figured out that the giant bowls at the dragon’s head and tail made it a salt and pepper cellar when Mrs. Culp suddenly appeared, leading her cook and majordomo.

  She looked to be a decade Culp’s junior, closer to Bell’s age. She would hardly be the first rich man’s wife whose husband spent nights in the Cherry Grove bordello, but, thought Bell, Daphne Culp was such a looker it would not seem worth the trouble leaving home.

  “Bell,” Culp introduced him brusquely. “Met him racing at Seawanhaka.”

  Bell praised the ice yacht and her house, and she asked, “Do I hear the faintest trace of Boston in your voice, Mr. Bell?”

  “Guilty, ma’am. I thought most of it rubbed off at New Haven.”

  “Butler went to Yale, too, didn’t you, dear?”

  “John Butler Culp was a legendary Old Blue when I arrived,” said Bell.

  “Not that old, for gosh sakes,” said Culp.

  Daphne soon established she and Bell had in common distant cousins by marriage, and she asked him to stay to dinner. “Did you come up from New York? You better stay the night.”

  “Let me show you the gymnasium,” said Culp.

  “Your own prize ring,” said Bell.

  “And my own prizefighters.”

  Culp introduced Lee and Barry. They were well-knit men, with firm, elastic steps. Lee was tall and lean, Barry slightly shorter and twice as wide, and Culp would reap the benefit of training with different types.

  “Did I hear somewhere you boxed for Yale?” Culp asked.

  “I believe I heard the same about you.”

  “Shall we go a couple?”

  Bell took off his coat and shoulder holster.

  Culp asked, “Do you have much occasion for artillery in the insurance business?”

  “Violent swindlers are notable exceptions,” Bell answered, hanging his coat and gun on a peg. He stripped off his tie and shirt, stepped up onto the ring, ducked through the tightly strung ropes, and crossed the canvas into the far cor
ner. Culp removed his coat, tie, and shirt and climbed in after him. “Do you need gloves?”

  “Not if you don’t.”

  “Put ’em up.”

  Barry, who had been punching the heavy bag, and Lee, twirling the Indian clubs, watched with barely concealed smirks. Barry banged the bell with the little hammer that hung beside it. Culp and Bell advanced to the center of the ring, touched knuckles, backed up a step, and commenced sparring.

  Bell saw immediately that Culp was very, very good, sporting a rare combination of bulk, speed, and agility. Though ten years Bell’s senior, he was extremely fit. Bell was not surprised. At the yacht club, Culp had bounded about the decks of his New York “Thirty” like a born athlete. What was slightly surprising was how determined the Wall Street titan was to give him a black eye. In fact, he seemed bent on it, swinging repeatedly at his head, to the point where it made him reckless. Frustrated by Bell’s footwork and impenetrable guard, he began unleashing punches that opened chinks in his own defense.

  Lee rang the bell, ending the first round. They took a moment’s rest and went another.

  In the third round, Culp threw caution to the wind and charged, using his bulk in an attempt to startle Bell into dropping his ground and hurling at him a mighty right. Had it connected, it would have knocked Bell through the ropes.

  Culp tried the tactic again, and Bell decided to end it before things got further out of hand. He opened Culp with two swift feints of his left hand, then planted a light jab with the same left in Culp’s eye.

  Unpadded by gloves, Bell’s knuckles took their toll, and Culp staggered backwards. His face darkened with anger, and he stepped through the ropes, holding his eye.

  “Take over!”

  The tall, lean Lee put down the Indian clubs and climbed into the ring.

  Culp lumbered toward the door. “You’ll excuse me, I have to dress for dinner. Enjoy the facility, Detective Bell.”

  “I wondered when you’d figure that out,” said Bell.

  “Long before I saw your gun.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Now I know for sure what you’re up to.”